Apple Isle Showdown: Tas Govt threatens to end Hawks, North deals if no plan for 19th side

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Mr Taswegian

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People who grew up in Hobart and haven't lived anywhere else don't really 'get' public transport and are very carcentric. This is why they don't like Bellerive, because you can't park out the front and walk in. The thought of parking a few blocks away and walking = bad access. No modern stadium will be built to accommodate cars in any meaningful way. Hobartians must get used to the idea of catching a bus (or other form of PT which doesn’t yet exist in Hobart) or parking a distance away and walking, which, as I've suggested, will result in people complaining about access. Even for a brand new stadium.
Sadly I think Hobart's AFL crowds will always suffer if they keep Blundstone Arena and could eventually lead to Launceston hosting all games for a Tassie AFL team if they can show there AFL crowds are constantly bigger.
 

Bicco

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I don't understand people who use this type of statement as an argument.
If the government recognises a problem then it should attack the problem it shouldn't be mutually exclusive.
$300 million for a stadium is what it takes these days. You don't want to do a "Subiaco Oval" and cheap out, basically being outdated when it was completed. A stadium has to be built with the long future in mind.
A $300 million stadium doesn't cost $300 million. The government gets a lot back in taxation and why not ask the federal government to help out like the rugbies do.
$300 million for public housing also creates a lot of economic activity but like a stadium it creates ongoing issues as well.
Firstly it's going to cost a lot more than $300 million to build a stadium. The proposal currently sits at $750 million. So that means that the two concepts (housing v stadium) aren't exclusive because the Tasmanian government doesn't have endless amounts of money to spend.
We currently have a massive shortage of affordable/public housing in the state and we also have a stadium that I will dare say has been completely sold out maybe less than 5 times in in the last 40 years.
There is no pressing need for a $750 million stadium. There is a pressing need to safely house our fellow citizens.
 

Mr Taswegian

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Firstly it's going to cost a lot more than $300 million to build a stadium. The proposal currently sits at $750 million. So that means that the two concepts (housing v stadium) aren't exclusive because the Tasmanian government doesn't have endless amounts of money to spend.
We currently have a massive shortage of affordable/public housing in the state and we also have a stadium that I will dare say has been completely sold out maybe less than 5 times in in the last 40 years.
There is no pressing need for a $750 million stadium. There is a pressing need to safely house our fellow citizens.
I agree Hobart doesn't need a $750 million dollar stadium but they definitely need to look at building a cheaper stadium or maybe upgrading Kgv oval in Glenorchy. If Hobart's AFL crowds are constantly smaller than Launcestons they're will definitely be calls to move all games up here in the north and that would be a shame for Hobart.
 

Bicco

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I agree Hobart doesn't need a $750 million dollar stadium but they definitely need to look at building a cheaper stadium or maybe upgrading Kgv oval in Glenorchy. If Hobart's AFL crowds are constantly smaller than Launcestons they're will definitely be calls to move all games up here in the north and that would be a shame for Hobart.
My Grand idea is to build a stadium where the Army base in Goodwood is. You would have access to every road outlet plus an established ferry port. The DEC, racecourse and stadium would all be together. It'd be great for a Commonwealth Games bid.
 

Mr Taswegian

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My Grand idea is to build a stadium where the Army base in Goodwood is. You would have access to every road outlet plus an established ferry port. The DEC, racecourse and stadium would all be together. It'd be great for a Commonwealth Games bid.
I think that would be a great location,we need to find somewhere that can maximize crowd numbers in Hobart otherwise i strongly believe if Launceston pulls the biggest crowds by a considerable amount they will eventually bring all games to Launceston.
 
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People who grew up in Hobart and haven't lived anywhere else don't really 'get' public transport and are very carcentric. This is why they don't like Bellerive, because you can't park out the front and walk in. The thought of parking a few blocks away and walking = bad access. No modern stadium will be built to accommodate cars in any meaningful way. Hobartians must get used to the idea of catching a bus (or other form of PT which doesn’t yet exist in Hobart) or parking a distance away and walking, which, as I've suggested, will result in people complaining about access. Even for a brand new stadium.
That's a laughable concept in a city with very little public transport. The idea that people have to catch buses is just ideological bullshit, and will only result in people simply not going, especially when the weather is poor. Metricon was built on that idea and you can see the outcome. Buses move small numbers of people slowly and people hate catching them.

Would you build a shopping centre with no carparks? If not, why not? It's the same principle.
 

Bicco

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That's a laughable concept in a city with very little public transport. The idea that people have to catch buses is just ideological bullshit, and will only result in people simply not going, especially when the weather is poor. Metricon was built on that idea and you can see the outcome. Buses move small numbers of people slowly and people hate catching them.

Would you build a shopping centre with no carparks? If not, why not? It's the same principle.
How do you get to Optus Stadium?
 
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How do you get to Optus Stadium?
By train. Which can move lots of people really quickly. Very different to buses. But even then, when you rely on 80% of patrons using 1 mode of transport, big problems arise when there's a problem with that mode. Like on the weekend they had to shut Perth Station due to an "incident" so a lot of people had to find another way to get to the game or simply turn around and go home. I wouldn't call the Optus stadium transport arrangements good at all - it relies way too much on 1 form of transport. Friday night games are a nightmare to get to for that reason.

And in any case, Hobart is a city with no train services. You try and force everyone onto a bus and a lot won't go.
 

Bicco

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By train. Which can move lots of people really quickly. Very different to buses. But even then, when you rely on 80% of patrons using 1 mode of transport, big problems arise when there's a problem with that mode. Like on the weekend they had to shut Perth Station due to an "incident" so a lot of people had to find another way to get to the game or simply turn around and go home. I wouldn't call the Optus stadium transport arrangements good at all - it relies way too much on 1 form of transport. Friday night games are a nightmare to get to for that reason.

And in any case, Hobart is a city with no train services. You try and force everyone onto a bus and a lot won't go.
Right, but no one is driving to Optus are they? They're either catching the bus or train. In Perth my parents (elderly) and my sister with her kids all catch the bus up Canning Hwy. PT is a mindset adjustment. Once people use it and have confidence in it, there's no problems with it.
I just measured the distance from where I park in Bellerive to the front gates. 468m. This is the distance that some people in Hobart say is 'too far' and the oval has 'poor access'.
Where the oval is proposed in Hobart is reclaimed river, so basically nowhere to build a carpark, but if they did I predict that the next complaint would be the cost of using the carpark.
Hobart has no train system and it should, the proposed stadium runs straight past the existing (unused) old train line. The same people will complain that the access to the trains stations is poor.
There's no silver bullet that solves everyone's personal grievances.
At the end of the day, if people aren't willing to use the services available to get them to the new stadium (or park in the city and walk) then let's keep Bellerive and save $750 million. I'm more than happy with the current set-up. I'd knock down the Boon and Members stands and rebuild those. But keep it at Bellerive forever. It wouldn't bother me at all.
 

Mr Taswegian

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Right, but no one is driving to Optus are they? They're either catching the bus or train. In Perth my parents (elderly) and my sister with her kids all catch the bus up Canning Hwy. PT is a mindset adjustment. Once people use it and have confidence in it, there's no problems with it.
I just measured the distance from where I park in Bellerive to the front gates. 468m. This is the distance that some people in Hobart say is 'too far' and the oval has 'poor access'.
Where the oval is proposed in Hobart is reclaimed river, so basically nowhere to build a carpark, but if they did I predict that the next complaint would be the cost of using the carpark.
Hobart has no train system and it should, the proposed stadium runs straight past the existing (unused) old train line. The same people will complain that the access to the trains stations is poor.
There's no silver bullet that solves everyone's personal grievances.
At the end of the day, if people aren't willing to use the services available to get them to the new stadium (or park in the city and walk) then let's keep Bellerive and save $750 million. I'm more than happy with the current set-up. I'd knock down the Boon and Members stands and rebuild those. But keep it at Bellerive forever. It wouldn't bother me at all.
I really believe if we stick with Blundstone the crowds will always be affected by location issues and eventually all AFL games will be moved to Launceston due to insufficient crowd numbers. I'm not saying we should build a $750 million stadium but they definitely need to build one at a cheaper price otherwise it will mean Hobart will lose AFL and that will be a real shame.
 
By train. Which can move lots of people really quickly. Very different to buses. But even then, when you rely on 80% of patrons using 1 mode of transport, big problems arise when there's a problem with that mode. Like on the weekend they had to shut Perth Station due to an "incident" so a lot of people had to find another way to get to the game or simply turn around and go home. I wouldn't call the Optus stadium transport arrangements good at all - it relies way too much on 1 form of transport. Friday night games are a nightmare to get to for that reason.

And in any case, Hobart is a city with no train services. You try and force everyone onto a bus and a lot won't go.

Busses are the only public transport option to get to the Gabba in Brisbane (the Cross River Rail trainline will open in a few years, but up until now it has only been busses) and that hasn't impacted cricket/footy crowds here at all. Granted, we do have a very good busway network which helps quite a heap, but people generally don't seem to have any problems travelling via bus to games.
 

Bicco

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I really believe if we stick with Blundstone the crowds will always be affected by location issues and eventually all AFL games will be moved to Launceston due to insufficient crowd numbers. I'm not saying we should build a $750 million stadium but they definitely need to build one at a cheaper price otherwise it will mean Hobart will lose AFL and that will be a real shame.
If people won't go to Bellerive because they have to walk <1km from their car then we 100% do not deserve to have an AFL team. What a bunch of self entitled sooks.
 

The_JHF_Clinic

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Transport is a huge consideration but so are amenities. For many people a game day experience involves going to pubs/restaurants for beers/meals before and after the game. Let’s look at a few of the venues that have been raised in regards to amenities.

UTAS Stadium has plenty of options because the ground is a short walk from the CBD. Ditto the Gabba with the Woolloongabba/ Kangaroo Point precinct.

Now let’s contrast these examples with Metricon. When I first went to a game there a few years ago it was so lame. Had to park at the train station and get a bus in. The only option that I could find for pre-game drinks was a golf club across the Highway.

Blundstone is smack bang in the middle of suburbia. Maybe one or two average pubs back at Bellerive. Getting there is a nightmare on match day for most people with bumper to bumper traffic extending across the bridge at the first sign of decent crowd.

I have been to all four venues multiple times for AFL. The experiences of going to UTAS and the Gabba were so much easier and more enjoyable than the other two and it’s all about location (Adelaide and Perth obviously realised this by moving footy closer to the CBD). Hopefully a new stadium gets built in Hobart at the Mac Point site. It’s the perfect location, but probably piss the roof off cause it’s just too hard to justify at that price.
 
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To be fair, what sort of crowds do you think a Tassie team would draw if they were complete s**t for their first 10 years and it was pissing down with rain?
Think your forgetting about the large amount of support there is already down here for the Victorian clubs so I’m pretty confident they would be a lot more healthy then gws and the Gold Coast
 
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Right, but no one is driving to Optus are they? They're either catching the bus or train. In Perth my parents (elderly) and my sister with her kids all catch the bus up Canning Hwy. PT is a mindset adjustment. Once people use it and have confidence in it, there's no problems with it.

Well that's all great unless it doesn't go according to plan. How did your elderly parents deal with no event buses to the game against North?

Nothing wrong with public transport, it's a great thing that stadium transport is based around it, but when it's your only option things can get gnarly when something goes wrong. It also puts unnecessary pressure on the system when 40,000 people try and catch the train at once. If you look at the MCG and Docklands, the reason why crowds disperse so quickly is the multitude of transport options available. And they don't even have PT included in the ticket (not sure why TBH).

FFS, there isn't even a drop off zone at Optus Stadium. They even close off roads on the other side of the river to prevent people from going within coo-ee of the place. It's lunacy.

I just measured the distance from where I park in Bellerive to the front gates. 468m. This is the distance that some people in Hobart say is 'too far' and the oval has 'poor access'.
Where the oval is proposed in Hobart is reclaimed river, so basically nowhere to build a carpark, but if they did I predict that the next complaint would be the cost of using the carpark.
Hobart has no train system and it should, the proposed stadium runs straight past the existing (unused) old train line. The same people will complain that the access to the trains stations is poor.
There's no silver bullet that solves everyone's personal grievances.
At the end of the day, if people aren't willing to use the services available to get them to the new stadium (or park in the city and walk) then let's keep Bellerive and save $750 million. I'm more than happy with the current set-up. I'd knock down the Boon and Members stands and rebuild those. But keep it at Bellerive forever. It wouldn't bother me at all.

A city of 200,000 should have a suburban train network? Well i'm not going to debate you on that, but the reality is that they don't and are extremely unlikely to have one in our lifetime.
As I understand it, the proposed location is right next to the CBD. The beauty of that sort of location is you don't need to build extra carparks because you just utilise existing CBD carparks that people use during the week. You would only need to do it if you build it in a location where the carparks don't already exist. That's why Metricon is such a cluster* (or at least it was), they built it in the suburbs but then didn't arrange to open up some carparks. It was simply ideological bullshit that prevented them from doing so given there was so much empty land out there, and they pay the price with poor crowds. Hopefully they've changed their attitude a bit, but the damage might have been done.

I absolutely agree with you that no system is perfect, but the ultimate aim should be to make it as easy as possible for everyone.
 

jj15

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Haha these posts about traffic chaos before and after game. I live on the other side of the river. Took me 15 minutes to get home on the weekend. Yerp a low crowd on the weekend but I went to Richmond vs Kangaroos a couple years ago and got home in the same amount of time.
You can hypothesise all you want but that is my lived experience.
How do people think they’ll get to a Maq 1 stadium? Rail? Haha cars? How’s the traffic going to be? Ferry? Teleportation?
We don’t need another stadium.
 
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The Tasmanian AFL taskforce to invite all AFL presidents to Tasmania to push the case to them and the AFL and the taskforce will meet next Friday to finalise details on Tassie's case.
Getting the presidents to hear and speak to the those directly involved in Tassie push is a great initiative.
 

Mr Taswegian

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Melbourne Journalist is reporting that part of the backing for a Tassie AFL team is going to be through private ownership,I look forward to seeing how this would work for an AFL team.
 

kranger

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Whilst a new Macquarie Point Stadium has the greatest vision, it seems the like cost is off-pointing.

So if we run with Bellerive Oval as being the venue for AFL, how can it be improved.

It seems like the two main gripes are:
1. the limited capacity due to the road and house constraints to the north;
2. transport access to the venue from around Hobart.

On point two, at Optus Stadium the event buses are also highly used. There is a dedicated event bus station that has 22 bus stands. That is used as a car park on non-event days. It can be broken down into the northern (150m) and southern (140m) sections.

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75c7fe2a84fd16bca3923c8f07d23a9e.jpg


In regards to Bellerive Oval, they could purchase all the properties north of the oval up to Clarence Street. Make this into a large forecourt entrance to the stadium.

And build an event bus station split into a western and eastern section, each being about the lengths of the northern and southern sections of the Optus Stadium bus station. The western one would replace the intersection with Derwent Street, and the eastern one replacing the intersection at Beach Street.

Without a rail network, the bus network would have to be relied on more than on Perth, so despite being a smaller stadium, would need a similar sized bus station as Optus Stadium.

And then a new northern stand could be constructed with 10,000 seats, expanding the stadium capacity to about 27,000. Also resolving issue 1.

31523b34dd1edf2bcd83ade5c676e4d4.jpg


1dd892d83d4a664c7c90ce9cd0731095.jpg


And then from the new bus stations, run event buses to all corners of Hobart, and even some coaches that go to northern Tasmanian towns.

90mins before events, run a bus on each route every 10mins for a big convenience.

Maybe even at the end of events, close Clarence Street to traffic to give the buses a free escape, so people find them to be really convenient, resolving issue 2.

3824c3680a33f5b254f04987d93e4be3.jpg
 

Bjo187

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Whilst a new Macquarie Point Stadium has the greatest vision, it seems the like cost is off-pointing.

So if we run with Bellerive Oval as being the venue for AFL, how can it be improved.

It seems like the two main gripes are:
1. the limited capacity due to the road and house constraints to the north;
2. transport access to the venue from around Hobart.

On point two, at Optus Stadium the event buses are also highly used. There is a dedicated event bus station that has 22 bus stands. That is used as a car park on non-event days. It can be broken down into the northern (150m) and southern (140m) sections.

8243f9942c21901af6450971536f5aa6.jpg


75c7fe2a84fd16bca3923c8f07d23a9e.jpg


In regards to Bellerive Oval, they could purchase all the properties north of the oval up to Clarence Street. Make this into a large forecourt entrance to the stadium.

And build an event bus station split into a western and eastern section, each being about the lengths of the northern and southern sections of the Optus Stadium bus station. The western one would replace the intersection with Derwent Street, and the eastern one replacing the intersection at Beach Street.

Without a rail network, the bus network would have to be relied on more than on Perth, so despite being a smaller stadium, would need a similar sized bus station as Optus Stadium.

And then a new northern stand could be constructed with 10,000 seats, expanding the stadium capacity to about 27,000. Also resolving issue 1.

31523b34dd1edf2bcd83ade5c676e4d4.jpg


1dd892d83d4a664c7c90ce9cd0731095.jpg


And then from the new bus stations, run event buses to all corners of Hobart, and even some coaches that go to northern Tasmanian towns.

90mins before events, run a bus on each route every 10mins for a big convenience.

Maybe even at the end of events, close Clarence Street to traffic to give the buses a free escape, so people find them to be really convenient, resolving issue 2.

3824c3680a33f5b254f04987d93e4be3.jpg

A well thought out post the only issue is all those properties are super expensive so you'd be spending about 50 mill on buying them out before even getting started. The new stand at bellreive was built for 60 mill I think so doing the un developed side you could do for let's say 150 mill. So yeah 200 mill in total, it's a lot cheaper, the saved money should go to the new club though, or some of it.
 
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The $1billion dollars the Tas gov is willing to spend is only worthwhile if they get a few thousand travelling from the mainland for each game. So the experience has to be as good as going to the SCG, AO, Optus, MCG, Dockland, etc that are all centrally located, near accomodation, with excellent access and multiple eating and drinking options before and after the game. So that is not Bellerive. It needs to be done property. The experience needs to be awesome. Location is the most important thing. Fans don’t want a roof. Everyone hates Marvel yet they want to build something similar. Nor does it need to be multi-purpose. Just build a 30k footy stadium at Macquarie Point for $350m - $400m, and bribe each AFL club with $10m and hey presto Tassie is in.
 

Mr Taswegian

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The $1billion dollars the Tas gov is willing to spend is only worthwhile if they get a few thousand travelling from the mainland for each game. So the experience has to be as good as going to the SCG, AO, Optus, MCG, Dockland, etc that are all centrally located, near accomodation, with excellent access and multiple eating and drinking options before and after the game. So that is not Bellerive. It needs to be done property. The experience needs to be awesome. Location is the most important thing. Fans don’t want a roof. Everyone hates Marvel yet they want to build something similar. Nor does it need to be multi-purpose. Just build a 30k footy stadium at Macquarie Point for $350m - $400m, and bribe each AFL club with $10m and hey presto Tassie is in.
It definitely needs to be sheltered from the elements but I think a roof isn't really necessary. Macquarie Point will never happen because they already have plans set out for that area but Regatta Point or possibly Glenorchy is where it really needs to be built.
 
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